


Sincerity and the Subconscious

by GrowlingPeanut



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Jack - Freeform, Nightmares, Vaughn - Freeform, also Gortys and Loader Bot, and Sasha - Freeform, are all mentioned but not in it, people only die in the nightmare don't worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 20:11:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18818146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrowlingPeanut/pseuds/GrowlingPeanut
Summary: Rhys can't escape the events of what happened on Helios, beforeorafter it crashed. He's plagued by nightmares more frequently than he'd like to admit, but luckily Fiona is there to shoulder some of the burden.





	Sincerity and the Subconscious

**Author's Note:**

> This was co-authored by a friend of mine from the Telltale Forums. She wrote the first half (the dream sequence) and I wrote the last half.

_Where...where am I?_ I ask myself. My body feels relaxed...oddly relaxed. As my eyes are adjusting to the lighting, I turn to my right to see a small blue light emitting from the corner with blurs. I look down to see my arms resting on yellow armrests, must belong to a chair. “Wakey wakey Rhysie, I’m waiting for an answer.” A familiar voice calls out to me, one that I can’t forget very easily. I blink a few times, causing my eyes to adjust. In front of me, is Jack, in his blue pixelated form. “Ah, finally! Geez, you blacked out there on me. I started to get worried, like you died or something.” 

“Yeah...sorry about that...” _I think?_ “Can you repeat what you said? I’m a bit confused on the details.” Jack sighs, not that I can blame him. He just wasted, what I would presume was, a lot of time telling me something and I didn’t even hear it. 

Jack sighs heavily and rubs his temple. “Fine. I want you to rule Hyperion with me by your side.” _Rule Hyperion? With Jack?_ While Jack continues to name the positives, as I was sure he would, I think about those four words alone. I’m back on Helios, and this is so much more than I wished for. I’m not going to be the Vice President of Hyperion, but the actual President. However...with _Jack?_ “Are you listening, kiddo? I’m not going to repeat this for a third time.” Jack brings me back to reality.

“Yeah, I am!” I lie. Jack shakes his head slightly and this time, I listen with full attention.

“You could even take selfies with that con-artist babe of yours on so many different planets, Rhys. Ah, and don’t worry, I’ll be your wingman if I need to.” Now that's tempting to say the least. I haven’t been exactly able to show my feelings to Fiona as much as I'd like to. We often bump heads and rarely, we can smile at one another without any hostility behind it. Though, earlier Jack had mentioned how many wives he had so I’m not sure if I’m too keen on him helping me flirt with Fiona. That might make things much worse. I’ll just stick with the selfies.

“If you and I rule Hyperion, you can help those on Pandora. Hell, you might even do a better job than me. What do you say?”

I can rule Hyperion, change Pandora for the better, and go to numerous planets with Fiona. That is, _if_ I accept the deal.

“Rhys, did you get the piece?” Fiona’s voice rings in my ear. That’s right, I’m with Fiona and the others. Vaughn is waiting back on Pandora for me and he’s not in the most comfortable of positions. I’m here for my friends, not for Hyperion. Now that I think about it, I’m not here for Jack either. When has he helped me? The only time I can remember is his offer back at the abandoned Atlas facility when we got Gortys and while his plan to save all our asses seemed well-thought-out, I went for Fiona’s plan. Not because I liked her, that was beside the point, but because I trusted her more with my life than Jack. Before getting inserted in my head, he murdered people...he’s what truly gave Hyperion a bad rep. Why would I want to make a deal with him?!

“No,” I jump out of my chair, “why would I want to run this hell hole especially with _you_ by my side?” 

“Ahhh...you know, Rhys, I thought you weren’t that bad. After all we’ve been through and what I taught you, you’re still an idiot. Just an idiot that _I’m stuck in!_ ”

“You can kiss my ass, Jack and while you’re doing that, I’m going to see my friends. See ya, **_kiddo_**.” I salute with two fingers and begin to head towards the hidden passage to the place where Sasha and Fiona are waiting. 

“Oh _hell_ no, where do you think you’re going?” Jack asks me with a menacing face. I can feel my cybernetic arm swing behind me, grabbing hold of the closest armrest on the chair. I look at Jack, whose arm is mimicking my cybernetic one. With all its force, it pulls me back into the chair. “I was going to make this easy for you, Rhys. I was actually going to let you have a say, but now? I’m going to have to force you.” A single hand restraint pops out of the left armrest, wrapping around my human hand tightly. 

“W-what are you doing?! I need to get back to my friends!” I yell at him. I gulp. Is...is he really going to kill me? I try to free my other hand with my cybernetic arm with all my strength, but as I know, that can be very little especially in a situation where my cybernetic arm can’t rip off an arm strap. 

“Why do you look so worried? I’m not going to kill you, no, that would be too easy. Instead, I’m going to make things very...very simple for you.” He points his blue index finger towards his desk, my gaze following in the direction he’s pointing. Without my knowledge, a red button has appeared on the desk. “You see that button? Just press it.”

“W...what is it going to do when I press it?”

“I can’t spoil the surprise, Rhys. You can find that out yourself.” Jack grins at me and moves his face close to mine. “ _Press it_.” 

“Hell no! Why should I?! For all I know, it could kill me!”

“Ah, why must you make things so...damn...difficult?” I can feel my cybernetic arm moving on its own. 

“Stop!” I call out to him and on instinct, I try to hold back my cybernetic arm, but I look back down to the left armrest, remembering that my left arm was held back. I...I can’t do anything! “Jack! You don’t have to do this!” I tell him, watching on as my arm only seems to inch closer and closer to the button. 

“Oh, but I do. You need to be taught a lesson Rhys, don’t defy a king or else you’ll get punished.” Jack makes my cybernetic index stick out and then, against my wishes, pushes the button. 

“Moonshots to Pandora, launching now.” Moonshots...to Pandora…?! Vaughn is there, waiting for me to return. _My best friend_ is there! Life finally springs back into my body; at the same time as the voice blares through the intercom. The restraint around my hand is released, setting me free but...it's too late. I bolt out of my seat and quickly turn to look at Jack who has a pleased look on his face. “You monster…” I mumble under my breath.

“I wish we could have a better view of the fireworks, don’t you wish the same, Rhys? Seeing the look on your friends’ faces when they realize what you've done. Ahh man, that sounds so great! And they'll think it was your idea, too!” Jack begins to cackle. 

I turn pale at the thought. That’s right...I never did tell any of them about Jack, not even Vaughn. I was scared about how they would react, if they would abandon me. Now, that choice is coming back to haunt me. “N-no...No…” I fall to my knees, trying to hold back the tears. I cover my ears, trying to silence Jack’s laughter. However, it only seems to get louder and louder. “You launched the moonshots...Y-you fired them. You pressed the button!” I cry out.

“Poor Vaughn. What do you think his last thoughts will be of before those moonshots obliterate him?” Jack ignores my claim and proceeds to just rub salt into the wound. “Maybe it's him giving you a bro-fist or some stupid shit like that?” Jack says, ignoring what I just said to him.

“Shut up..Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I cry out, pressing my hands harder against my ears. _Please...just make this stop! This isn’t happening!_

“You know Rhys, friends...they’re only temporary. Hell, I would know. It’s better to just off them before they go ahead and stab you in the back, like _you_ did with _me_...” He kneels down in front of me and smiles, looking content at my pain. With impeccable timing, a familiar voice rings in my ears.

“Rhys, what the _HELL_ did you just do!?” Fiona yells into my ear. “You said you were going to get the Gortys piece, not blow up Pandora!”

“What do you mean? Everything is going according to plan!” Words I never intended to say come out of my mouth. “Now, next is step two!” Suddenly, gunshots can be heard in the distance. “Good luck, babe.”

“SHIT-” Fiona’s voice gets cut off. 

“F-FI!” I call out, finally gaining back the ability to speak again. Nothing, no response. “F...Fiona...Sasha...Gortys, answer me...please…” I beg, but the result is still the same; I don’t get a single response. 

“How about we go visit them, kiddo?” Jack offers his hand to me and I look at him, horrified. I’m scared to see them and knowing Jack, something will be off. Very off. My vision begins to go out of focus, everything becoming blurry. Jack smirks. “After all, it’ll be the last time you do,” he says in a static-y voice before my vision goes black.

***********************

When I come to, I’m in a different location; a large green hallway decorated with monitors that are turned on. Every single one has the same image on it, Jack’s pixelated face. When he sees me get up with a scared look, he smiles. “Oh hey, Rhys! Glad you can finally join us!” _Us?_

“Us? Where’s Fiona, Sasha, and Gortys?!” I ask him.

Jack raises his index finger and points it down the hallway. “Down there.”

Jack disappears off the monitors and I immediately start to sprint down the hallway. I need to find them, I need to know that they’re safe! I...I already lost Vaughn because of Jack, I can’t lose anyone else! As I get closer, I hear soft muffled crying. That only causes me to move even faster. Who's crying? _Why_ are they crying? I’m afraid to find out the answer.

What seems like an eternity passes by until I can see Fiona, kneeling down next to something, something I can't entirely recognize. That is, until Fiona desperately calls out a name. “Sasha! Don’t leave me, please!”

 _Sasha?_ I stop in my tracks, only a few feet away from the scene. This can’t be her. This can't be Sasha. It's just a body covered in red. Fear begins to creep up my spine, those gunshots earlier, they were all meant for Sasha and every single shot hit with perfect accuracy. I try to inch myself closer, but the smell blows through my nostrils, making me nearly gag and leaving tears in my eyes. All I can do is stand there and look at the scene; watch Fiona crying over her sister that Jack killed out of cold blood. 

“You’re a monster…” Fiona mutters. She jumps up to her feet and looks me in the eye, her face stained from all the tears she’s cried. “You’re a goddamn _monster!_ ”

My heart immediately drops. I didn’t do this... It was all Jack! “No, I-I—” I gain enough courage to walk towards Fiona despite the stench within the hall getting stronger, I reach out to her, hoping she'll listen.

“Don’t come near me!” She screams out, pulling her tiny golden pistol out at me. I hold up my hands in defense, trying to show her I mean no harm. “You killed Vaughn and now the only family I had left?! You said you we were your friends!”

 _You are my friends, I never lied about that!_ I try to protest, but not a single word comes out. “I got this, cupcake.” Jack’s voice echoes in my head. “Fiona, babe, she was holding us back! They all were! Now, we can rule Hyperion...” I move forward toward her, I can feel a smirk being painted onto my face. As I close in on Fiona, I notice the hand she’s holding that pistol so tightly with is shaking, her eyes are full of fear. I extend my cybernetic hand out to her. “Together.” 

“I…” Fiona’s arm steadies, “I hope you rot in hell, Rhys.” A gunshot echoes throughout the hall and my vision goes black.

************************

Did I die? If so, it seemed almost painless as if I got shot in the head. However, sirens start going off. As much as I don’t want to, I open my eyes. I’m in a hallway decorated with monitors only displaying a light blue screen. On the other side, there are escape pods; many of them already gone. Why? Then, the intercom comes on once again.

“I repeat, Helios is crashing down onto Pandora. Please get to the nearest escape pod as soon as possible.” What!? I jump onto my feet and frantically look around. Most of the escape pods were already used and the ones I can find are broken. I bolt down the hallway, my footsteps drowned out by the loud sirens. I’m not dying here, I can’t! I...I need to get back to Pandora. Vaughn is smart enough to steal the caravan back from Vallory and move out of the way from the moonshots... He had to...right? 

In the distant, I can see Loader Bot, his state still the same as it was before. He’s desperately trying to open an escape pod that’s been closed down. I smile, the only good thing to come out of this trip. We can go back to Pandora together and see Vaughn, at least I still have those two.

“Loader Bot!” I call out his name. He turns and sees me, then immediately goes back to trying to open the pod. When I reach him, he’s opened the pod. “Oh man, am I glad to see—” Loader Bot lays his big metal hand on my chest. “...LB? What are you—” He pushes me with all his force, which is like a truck hitting you head-on, something you wouldn’t expect out of robot with half his body missing. My body hits the wall hard; I rub the back of my head and look at Loader Bot with a confused expression. “Why did you do that?!”

“Rhys. You betrayed us.” Loader Bot says to me.

My eyes widen and I shake my head. “N-no! You got it all wrong LB!” How do I explain this to him, especially now? “Jack did it! He made me do all of this—”

“Do you know what happened to Gortys?”

“...Huh?” 

“She was taken captive by Kroger back to Pandora once the moonshots you fired stopped. We have no clue where she could be. If you did not betray us Rhys, none of this would have happened. I thought we were your friends.” The escape pod closes between us. “You are not a friend, Rhys. I am not saving you here. You can find a way out by _yourself_.” He turns around, the black backing of the seat now facing me.

I bang on the glass separating us. “Loader Bot...please, don’t leave me. I-I didn’t do any of this! It was Jack!” I cry out softly. Why will no one _believe_ me?

“It might as well have been," LB says, as the escape pod launches away.

My heart drops and tears well up in my eyes. I’m alone now and I’m going to die alone...I turn around and slide down on the escape pod door. I hug my knees, the only thing willing to accept my touch. Why? What did I do to deserve this? I did everything in my power to make _sure_ things went right. 

_These are our friends, Scooter_... The words that Fiona spoke at the garage play in my mind like an ECHO tape. That meant so much to me, that I finally gained her trust, hell, everyone’s trust. I felt welcomed, like I belonged. Now, all that’s gone to waste because of—

“Hey Rhys.” I look up to see Jack’s face on the many monitors that decorated this hall. 

“Remember what I told you earlier? About how friends are only temporary and you ignored me? You still clung onto that hope that your friends would accept you for being that Hyperion employee who wanted to rise to the top _so badly_. Guess what kiddo, they’re gone.”

I want to speak, but the words are stuck in my throat. He...he’s right. They _are_ gone and they all thought that everything that happened was because of _me_. It was all because of him, _Jack_ , that I lost those I cared about; people I could finally call ‘friends’ outside of Vaughn and Yvette.

“Then, you refused my offer. Rhys, we could have _been_ something. We could have _ruled_ Hyperion and Pandora. You just wanted to be the hero of your own story. Now, you’re going to die here with me, the villain. Fitting, isn’t it?”

I shake my head and put my forehead to my knees, clutching them tighter. I close my eyes, tears hitting the metal floor that I’m sitting on. _Let this end already, please_ , is the last thought I have before my consciousness gives into the darkness.

*********************

When I come to, I hear the loud crackling of fire. _Am I in Hell?_ I slowly open my eyes to see debris around me and fire in the distance. When my vision becomes clear, I can see a barely-hanging poster of Jack, something I had in my office along with the many other posters I had of him when I still naïve. I get up on my feet and scan my surroundings fully with my ECHO-eye. Everything around me is what's left of Helios and by some miracle, if I can even call it that, I’m alive along with it all. I walk forward and look at the Handsome Jack poster of him posing in front of a podium with many Loader Bots behind him, looking like they’re ready to attack at his command. I shake my head in disgust, I used to have a faithful companion but Jack burned _that_ bridge; hell, he burned every single bridge there was that connected me to everyone.

I walk through a tunnel full of debris and push some out of the way to further examine the crash site. The trail of metal and recognizable debris continues along the path, the only different thing being a huge statue of Handsome Jack. “Asshole…” I scoff at it. I turn my attention back ahead of me and see the trail end. The same office I was in earlier, the one where Jack made me... _No, don’t think about it Rhys._ I hold back the tears and move up the small set of stairs. 

“Ah, kiddo…” A terribly familiar voice says. I look up to see the tilted and cracked monitor behind the damaged brown desk; Jack’s there. “I thought you wouldn’t make it.”

“I was hoping for it. After all, what do I have left?” I glare daggers at Jack’s stretched face on the monitor. “You fucked up _everything_ I had! You…” my hands turn into tight fists, “you killed Vaughn and Sasha.” I can recount that pool of red and Fiona crying, kneeling down beside her sister. Vaughn...God, I don’t even want to imagine it. “Gortys is gone and Loader Bot left me, thinking the hell hole you caused back up there was _my fault!_ ” I bark at him.

The monitor turns to black and Jack appears by my side; my attention still glued to him. “None of it would have happened if you agreed to the deal Rhys; simple as that. It’s _not_ my fault, it’s all yours." He dares to point at me, his finger nearly going through my chest. 

“Get your fucking finger away from me!” I back up, clearly aggravated. I want to punch him so hard, but I know all that would lead me to is my fist just going straight through him. I want him to go away, I want him out of my life! “You pressed that button because you took control of this stupid cybernetic arm. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Nakayama’s drive, you would be in Hell, where you deserve to be! All alone, rotting there! Hell, I don’t blame your daughter for abandoning your crazy ass-”

“Do. Not. Talk. About Angel, kiddo. You’re really…” He walks closer to me and I begin to back up, “pissing me,” he raises his left hand and my cybernetic hand follows, “THE FUCK OFF!” Jack grabs his throat and my cybernetic hand grabs mine, tightly. My eyes widen at the sight. He’s really going to kill me... “You want me to rot in Hell and think you’re not going down _with_ me, Rhys? You must be out of your mind! I’m going to enjoy _watching you die_."

I continue to back up, the grip around my neck getting tighter until I bump into a piece of debris and a metal rod pierces through my arm. “You see this, Rhys? _This_ is leadership. _This_ is what being a goddamn king looks like, taking out _whatever_ gets in your way!”

I look at my arm; my vision is getting dark. Am I...going to lose here? No, I’m not going to let him win, I refuse. He’s won too many times! I grab hold of the yellow shoulder piece on my arm and tear it off with every fiber of strength I have left. Then, I quickly take hold of my cybernetic arm with my human hand and try to remove its grip on my throat. He won’t win this round, even if it means ripping this stupid arm off! The pressure on my neck lessens and a few seconds pass before I yank the arm away from my neck. I back up to the side, making sure it will no longer reach me. I grab the now revealed wires and pull a few away. I gulp; this is _really_ going to hurt. I start to back away even further and I can hear the wires snapping and the arm slowly coming free from my body.

“What the hell are you doing, Rhys?!” Jack asks me.

“Something I should have done a long time ago,” I grunted. Soon, he won’t have control and I’ll be free! The wires keep on snapping, which sounds like music to my ears at this point. 

“Rhys, stop!” Jack’s voice becomes distorted while he continues to yell, as if it's becoming mixed with another’s...

**************************************************************

_“Rhys…? Rhys!”_

Hands grabbing his shoulders made him jerk backward, hissing. He wouldn’t let Jack win this time. Not while there was a chance he could still—

_“Rhys! Stop! You don’t know—”_

“No, Jack!” He growled. “I've had _enough_ of your—”

_“Jack’s gone!”_

He hesitated. The voice wasn’t… But, Fiona? That didn’t...She’d left him back on— The hands gripping his shoulders shook him once, forcefully, dragging him into sudden consciousness. The face staring into his own wasn’t the snarling, pixelated mask of Handsome Jack. It was… “Fi-ona?” He swallowed hard, hating the way his voice cracked.

Slowly, she let go of his shoulders and sat back, brows drawn together, concern evident in her pale green eyes. Her gaze flicked downward a second before she reached out toward his left wrist, pulling his fingers away from where they'd been—curled under the shoulder plate of his cybernetic arm, white with tension. “You okay? Sounded like a pretty bad nightmare,” she finally murmured, crossing her legs.

He slumped back against the headboard and shut his eyes. Of course she was here. She’d never left. Jack hadn’t touched her. Jack hadn’t touched any of them. Vaughn, Gortys, Sasha, Loader Bot; they were all safe. Jack was...dead. Gone. Fragmented into so many pieces that not even Nakayama would have been able to put him back together. Pretty soon, those little shards of that shattered ECHO-eye would be ground into dust and scattered across Pandora. _Poetic justice_ , Rhys mused sourly. _Brought down by one of his own employees on the planet he hated. Suck_ that, _you asshole._

“Feel like talking about it?”

Fiona’s soft question roused him from his internal eulogizing. He turned to look at her. She still hadn’t let go of his hand. “It’s fine,” he lied. There was no use worrying her with problems she couldn’t fix. “Just the...usual stuff.”

She frowned, tracing the lines on his palm with her thumb. “Didn’t sound like it.”

Rhys sighed. He should have known she’d be able to see right through him. She always did. “Yeah, okay…so it was...a little worse, probably.” He shrugged weakly. “But I don’t need to talk about it, Fi, honest—”

“I had to stop you from tearing out your arm. That’s _never_ happened before.” Her voice didn’t hold any traces of reprimand, only worry. “How close was he to killing you this time?”

“Kinda sad when you have to end a question like _that_ with “this time,” am I right…?” he trailed off when Fiona’s expression didn’t change. “It...uh...it wasn’t me he was after in this one. Not...directly anyway. Well, yes, directly. But also indirectly—”

“Rhys..."

"Yeah, yeah..." He drew in a shaky breath and held it for a minute. “It...uh...it was a long one. Or...at least it felt like it."

Fiona smiled and gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “I’ve got all night.” Before he could protest, she’d scooted back against the headboard beside him, pulling the blankets up to her neck. “Just start from the beginning.”

“This is your last chance to back out,” he joked weakly. He knew she wouldn’t, and breathed a quiet sigh of resignation when she wordlessly tucked her head against his shoulder. To anyone else, it would look like cuddling—which it _technically_ was—but Rhys knew it was also her way of telling him he was stuck there until she’d heard everything he had to say.

“Was it about Helios again?”

He nodded. “Whole thing started before it crashed, though.”

At this, Fiona raised her head again, and Rhys spared her a sidelong glance. She cocked her scarred eyebrow at him. “That’s new.”

He just offered a noncommittal shrug. He was still shaken by how _real_ the dream had seemed. All the emotions, all the senses...they’d been so strong. He’d _felt_ the moonshots send tremors through the station as they streaked toward Pandora. He’d _smelled_ the sickening metallic tang of fresh blood— _tasted_ the hot bile that forced its way up his throat. _Heard_ the alarms blaring. Heard… _Jack_. Taunting him. Scrambling his thoughts, making him say words that weren’t his own… “You know, I actually… _really_ don’t want to talk about this one, Fi,” he whispered, hardly recognizing his own voice.

Beside him, she shifted. "Jack went after me, didn't he?"

"Not...not exactly—God, don't...make me say it, please." His throat felt tight, and it didn’t help at all when Fiona leaned in and brushed her lips across his neck, feather-light.

“This problem won’t fix itself.” Her mouth was still so close to his skin; her breath was warm. “You _need_ to talk about it.”

He knew that. He did. He’d told her about countless other dreams... _Dreams_. It sounded so...docile. But dreams didn’t force you to wake up in a cold sweat night after night, heart pounding, gasping for breath. Dreams didn’t evoke the same kind of expression in the soft mint-green eyes of the woman next to you. Dreams didn’t make her worry. Dreams didn’t hurt her. Dreams didn’t hurt anyone.

He swallowed, trying to wash down the lump in his throat. “He made me kill Sasha.”

Fiona flinched.

Rhys didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. “A-and Vaughn—my God, I can’t do this…” Heat welled up behind his eyes as he pulled his knees against his chest, hugging them tightly. “I don’t know what I _ever_ saw in him, Fiona.” His voice hitched. “I can’t believe I wanted to be _anything_ like him. How could anyone be that… _selfish?_ H-He never...cared about _anyone_ but himself—not even...not even his own fucking _daughter_. I researched all that shit, you know. I-In the databanks. Some of them were still salvageable in the wreck…” He was just babbling now, the words falling out of his mouth unchecked, as freely as the tears that had finally spilled over.

“He _used_ her, Fi… Used her like—like a slave. H-He _exploited_ her for his own…” Rhys drew in a broken breath. “Said he was p-protecting her—yeah right. Bullshit. A-All of it—everything he ever said was a-a...fucking lie. How come no one else could see it? I-It was _so_ obvious… A-And I don’t even know h-how I _thought_ I could be like him—I mean, I’m not h-heartless or—or cruel or—I _care_ about people, I _h-have_ friends—”

A warm hand on his face made the words stick in his throat. “Hey...shh…” Fiona soothed, rubbing her thumb across his cheekbone. “You would have _never_ been like Jack, okay? Even if everything had gone according to plan and you ended up being the...President of Hyperion...or...whatever.”

Rhys couldn’t hold back a quiet laugh. “And you wonder why Vaughn made me the motivational speaker…”

“Oh, shut up… You’re not much better at it than I am.” She rolled her eyes, but leaned in to kiss him anyway.

Here, with her lips against his skin and the warmth of her body right next to him, Jack felt so far away. _All_ of it felt...distant. As if it had just been the two of them, sitting like this, for as long as he could remember. No specific beginning, and no foreseeable end. Just...existence. In this moment. He shut his eyes with a quiet sigh and finally allowed himself to relax as she sat back. “Talk to me,” he eventually murmured, resting his head against her shoulder.

“Okay…what about?”

“Don’t care,” he whispered. “Anything.” Right now, just hearing her voice was enough. Knowing she was safe, that she was with him...it was enough to keep the nightmares away. At least for the moment.

******************

“Anything, huh? Well. Hm…” She bit her lip. “That leaves me with a lot of options…” When his response was nothing more than a faint, incomprehensible mumble, she smiled. He’d be sleeping deeper than a hibernating rakk hive in a matter of minutes. She wrapped one arm around his shoulders and started toying with his hair.

“So...the first time I saw you, I didn’t know what to think,” she began, the smile still on her lips. He’d seemed so out of place, so _groomed_ , in his vest and those stupid half-pinstriped pants. He was so blatantly Hyperion that not even the _dirt_ on Pandora seemed to want to get anywhere near him. “Compared to Vaughn, you looked like a complete badass, honestly. Of course, it took all of five seconds of hearing you talk to realize what a dweeb you were…”

Granted, he was _still_ a dweeb. A richer, more honest, _slightly_ wiser dweeb than he had been...but a dweeb nonetheless. He’d never outgrow it—it was just his personality, and Fiona loved every minute of it.

“And hearing you try to get help from Hyperion about the case tracker… _that_ was good. That was…” she hesitated and pursed her lips. That was when she’d started to see him differently. “I guess you...somehow became more human, then,” she continued softly. “You were in just as much trouble as we were, and while I still didn’t trust you, I figured you couldn’t be _all_ bad. Or maybe it was just the satisfaction of seeing you squirm when you didn’t have a plan to fall back on. Whatever it was...I didn’t hate you quite as much from then on.”

She leaned back against the headboard and closed her eyes. His breathing had already evened out, so there was really no use in talking to him anymore. But she’d never said any of this out loud and it felt good to do it now, even if he couldn’t hear any of it. She’d tell him one day. Maybe...maybe during their wedding. Maybe in front of a fireplace in a nice house on a planet that _wasn’t_ Pandora. Maybe sitting on a couch with him, cuddling with their kids.

“I’m sorry I acted like a bitch when I found out about Jack,” she whispered. “I wasn’t mad at you. I was...scared. Pandoran natives know better than anyone else what Jack was capable of and I didn’t want to see any of it happen to you.” She didn’t even need to open her eyes as she traced the blue tattoos on his chest with one finger; she’d long since memorized them. “Friends have been few and far between for me and Sasha and I didn’t want to lose you like I’d lost most of the others.”

“You’re a good person, Rhys. If you were awake, you’d deny it in a heartbeat, but I’ve been able to see it from the start. Sure, it started small, but the longer we were together…” She breathed out a slow sigh. “What you did in Jack’s office… _those_ are your true colors. You’re sincere, you’re loyal… Hell, when you told me you didn’t pick one of those stupid flowers…” She laughed quietly. “You had this all planned out, didn’t you? You had _us_ planned out…”

His hair was soft between her fingers and she could feel his heartbeat with her other hand, still resting on his chest. He was so real and tangible and she never wanted to let go. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to. “The corporate nonsense—all the backstabbing and ladder-climbing—it never would have suited you. Which is probably for the better, anyway. It’s not easy, you know. Lying to make a living.” She smiled to herself. “But _every_ once in a while...it pays off.”

He fidgeted and grumbled something in his sleep, sinking even further into her shoulder. She couldn’t help grinning, and finally opened her eyes, bending down to kiss his hair. “And as long as you don’t drool on me this time...you can stay.”


End file.
